Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Part 2 of my X-Wing character and ship guide focuses on the Rebellions other major fighter the Y-Wing. Yes this sturdy and also very iconic workhorse of the Rebel alliance may be a little a outdated when compared to the Empires mass produced fighter forces, but nothing beats the solid reliability of this awesome fighter bomber.

The Y-wing could be described as a tank in X-Wing. The ship can take huge amounts of damage before going down with its 3 shields and 5 hull giving it a maximum of 8 damage before being destroyed. It is comparatively weaker than the X-Wing and in most straight up fights it will lose a dogfight with the nimble TIE fighter. The main reason to bring a Y-Wing to the party is the weapons. Although 2 damage is nothing to sniff at when TIE's only have 3 hull themselves, the Y-Wing can deploy numerous subweapons such as the Ion cannon, proton torpedoes and advanced Proton Torpedoes. Unlike the X-Wing the Y-Wing can mount 2 weapons as upgrades allowing it to have massive damage potential.

They aren't the fastest or most maneuverable ship, so they need close support of X-Wing or the soon to be released A-Wing to function well in a squadron as a canny Imperial player can easily position TIE fighters behind these slow moving ships.

All Y-Wing's are capable of using the (Focus) and (Target Lock) abilities.

Expansion Content List:

Pilot Cards:

Horton Salm
"Dutch" Vander
Gray Squadron Pilot
Gold Squadron Pilot

Equipment Cards:

Proton Torpedoes (2)
Ion Cannon Turret
R5-D8
R2 Astromech

Below is the list of Y-Wing pilots in ascending order of skill along with points cost and pilot abilities.

Like the X-Wing these ships can become expensive fast. Although they are a little cheaper compared to pilots like Luke and Wedge the real cost comes when you start adding weapons to these ships. Since a Y-Wing can essentially pack 2 missle payloads and the Ion cannon these fighters can start to add up. Horton Salm can be a deadly pilot if allowed to get a few shots off while Dutch can support friendlies by giving them target locks on the same fighter.

If you are building a 100 point squad there is no reason why you shouldn't bring along Horton Salm since he is very skilled and has a much higher chance to hit compared to his fellow Y-Wing pilots. But if you want a more swarm like approach you could go for multiple Gold squadron Y-Wing's to maximise firepower across the board, giving you 5 Y-Wing's with points to spare for a few droids or torpedoes.

One of the bigger downsides to the Y-Wing pilots is the lack of any pilot upgrade, true they can mount 2 weapons but being able to utilise marksmanship or determination would really augment the Y-Wing in a tough spot.

Next up is the astromech droids available to the Y-Wing's which are exactly the same as the X-Wing selection.

Name: R5 AstromechAbility: During the End phase, you may choose 1 of your faceup damage cards with the ship trait and flip it facedown.Cost: 1

Name: R5-K6Ability: After spending your target lock, roll 1 defence die. On a (Evade) result, immediately acquire a target lock on that same ship. You cannot spend this target during this attack.Cost: 2

Name: R2 AstromechAbility: You may treat all 1- and 2- speed maneuvers as green maneuvers.Cost:1

The ion cannon is probably the Y-Wing's trump card though expensive it can really ruin a tougher fighters day. Even the TIE Advanced can be left a sitting duck when hit by the ion cannon. The downside is the relatively high cost of the upgrade being 5 points per cannon